Modern society entails a kind of “civilizing process”, as Norbert Elias observed, by which new forms of behavioral regulation come online. What Elias did not see coming, however, was the wave of in-formalization (i.e. customs and relations getting less formal) that takes place in late modern societies. Following the 1950s, social life has taken a distinct turn towards the “casual” and informal, but this was not apparent back in 1939 when Elias wrote The Civilizing Process.
